cane. A huge refinery. Some thirty thousand employees in the fields. All owned by one family, the Hillo family.”
“I’ve heard of them, certainly, but what does all this—”
“Please. Patience,” Congreve said. “Two brothers control this vast sugar empire. The world’s largest, in fact. Pepe and Paquiero Hillo. Both world-class sportsmen. Polo, hunting, and game fishing. And, of course, golf.”
“Golf.”
“Yes, golf. And here, just east of La Romana, they built one of the most famous golf courses in the world. It takes its name from the name the ancients gave to the rocks that line this treacherous stretch of coastline.”
Congreve turned to Sutherland and smiled, raising his teacup to the bewildered man standing beside him.
“They named their golf course Dientes de Perro,” Congreve said.
“Which means?”
“Which means, my dear Inspector Sutherland, the Teeth of the Dog.”
He picked up a black marker and put a large X on the Hillos’ golf course.
“By God, I think you’re on to something,” Sutherland said with a broad smile.
“Might be,” Congreve said, puffing away, his blue eyes alight with satisfaction. “Just might be.”
20
Stokely Jones was waiting for Hawke just outside customs. Stoke, a former NYPD cop, had been with him ever since Hawke’s kidnapping five years ago. Gangsters from New Jersey had carjacked Hawke’s Bentley at a stoplight on Park Avenue, shot his chaffeur, and abducted Alex at gunpoint. Stoke had climbed six flights of burning stairs to rescue Hawke from where the kidnappers had left him to die. The top floor of an abandoned warehouse, a blazing inferno in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.
Thanks largely to Stoke’s determined police work, Hawke’s two kidnappers went off to spend life sentences in a maximum security New Jersey charm school, and the ten million in ransom was recovered from a motel room in Trenton.
Stoke was standing there, a huge grin on his broad face, holding up a sign that said “Dr. Brown.” It was their code at airports and hotels. “Dr. Brown” meant no immediate security issues.
“Dr. Brown has come to town!” Hawke said, dropping his small duffel bag and flinging an arm around the man’s massive shoulders. To say that Stoke was about the size of your average armoire would be an understatement.
Stoke had managed to have a fairly checkered career in his young life. A judge in the South Bronx had given him two choices. The slam on Riker’s Island or the U.S. Navy.
Stokely Jones had joined the latter, eventually winding up in San Diego at the Navy SEAL Training Center. Out on Santa Catalina, where the SEAL teams practiced using their munitions, he discovered a love of jumping out of airplanes, swimming huge distances underwater, and blowing things up. He became an expert in underwater demolition and search-and-seizure operations.
Stoke ended up as the legendary leader of the legendary SEAL Team Six. Six was the most elite and deadly of the SEAL teams, a top-secret counterterrorist unit founded by another Navy legend, the baddest of the bad, Richard Marcinko.
Needless to say, when Stoke left the Navy and joined the NYPD, he was one of the toughest rookies ever to walk a beat. He was still massive, and still took exceedingly good care of himself. He worked for Hawke, but in his heart, he was and always would be a Navy man.
“My man,” Stoke said, “look at you! Got yourself a tan! Why, you brown as a berry! What you been doin’ down in them islands?”
“Let’s just say that in the course of my current assignment, I was able to catch the occasional ray,” Hawke said, laughing. He picked up his bag and followed Stoke through the revolving doors.
“Well, get ready for changes in latitude, bossman,” Stoke said over his shoulder, “’cause you ’bout to freeze your skinny white ass off!”
He knew it might be a bit cool, still the sting of icy air took his breath away. December in Washington was usually just wet and chilly, but this was seriously cold weather. Under his flight suit, which had burned up in the fire, he’d been wearing nothing but khaki shorts, a Royal Navy T-shirt, and flip-flops. Mistake.
Flip-flops weren’t all that ideal for icy puddle-hopping, Hawke discovered following Stoke through the maze of snow-laden cars in the parking lot.
“So. Tell me. How was your flight, boss?”
“A little unexpected turbulence on the first leg. I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“So we going straight to the State Department,” Stoke said. “Conch called on the car phone and said it was urgent. Said bring your ass over there as soon as humanly possible.”
Stoke unlocked the doors to the beat-up black Hummer and climbed behind the wheel. For a Hummer, the car was deliberatelyun assuming. The fact that there was a turbocharged four-hundred-horsepower engine up front and that the entire body of the car was armor-plated was hidden by a disguise of dust and dents. The banged-up Virginia vanity plates on the Hummer read:
HUM THIS
Hawke opened the passenger side door and climbed in. He was hugging himself, shaking with cold. “Right, then. State Department,” he said, his words forming puffy white clouds of vapor that hung before his face. “And step on it.”
“You got it,” Stokely said, downshifting and roaring out of the parking lot.
“Any danger of getting some heat in here, Stoke?”
“Chill a minute, brother,” Stoke said.
“Oh, I am, I am chilling. I can assure you that much,” Hawke said, his teeth literally chattering.
“Hell happened to your arm?” Stoke asked, noticing the bandage.
“I cut myself shaving,” Hawke said, and Stokely just looked at him. Man said some crazy shit sometimes. Funny, but crazy.
“Good old Foggy Bottom, coming up,” Stoke said, stepping on the gas.
“Well,” Hawke said, settling back in his seat now that a blast of hot air was coming up from under the dashboard. “You look chipper, Stoke. Fine fettle, I must say.”
“Hell does that mean, ‘fine fettle’?”
“It means you look fit, Stoke, that’s all. In good form. Are the decorators all out of the new house?”
“Yeah, they out. None too soon for me, I’m telling you something. I ain’t had lots of experience with no decorators, but what I just had is plenty. Kinda shit we talk about at lunch? You ever heard of cerulean blue, boss? Me, either. But it’s serious blue. Nothing candy-ass like robin’s egg blue, you understand. Cerulean blue is darker, more like cobalt when it’s done. Anyway, that’s your bedroom.”
“Cerulean.”
“That’s it, boss. But this is one prime piece of real estate you got now. Man, wait till you see it. I still haven’t figured out all the security shit.”
“That’s reassuring. You being chief of security and all that.”
“No, man, I got most of it down. But this is some major high-tech shit you got goin’ on now. Hell, we got so many TV monitors ’round that house, our monitors has monitors! Know how they call the house The Oaks?”
“That’s been its name for two hundred years.”
“Well, my thought is we oughta change it. We oughta call it The Monitors. Got a hell of a lot more monitors than we got oaks.”
“It’s a thought.”
“So. Whassup? We chillin’ ’round here tonight or you flyin’ back to the Bahamas or wherever?”
“Spending tonight here,” Hawke said. “First night in the new house. I hope Pelham has seen to the flowers. Vicky will probably be—joining me there tonight.”
“Vicky? You still messin’ with that chick? Man, you are something else.”
